D'Alessandro: Knicks still haven't developed mindset to win at the most crucial time

Matt Campbell/EPACarmelo Anthony and the Knicks are down 0-2 in their playoff series with the Boston Celtics. Game 3 is Friday at 7 p.m. at Madison Square Garden.

Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget what the game is about this time of year, especially after you get bombarded with all the yammering about stars and matchups and systems and experience and blown calls and all the sound and the fury that really amount to nothing but hype and background music.

The game is really about two things: getting shots and getting stops in the last two minutes, period. Count the number of blowouts we’ve seen after three days (11 of the first 13 games all were undecided when they hit the 2:00 mark) and refute that. It’s always about execution.

This, of course, is why the Knicks are so infuriating. We can get into hypotheticals and counterfactuals about who was there and who wasn’t there, but it still comes down to this: If you think they should have come home with a 2-0 lead instead of an 0-2 deficit against Boston, you’re excusing them for losing the last two minutes of both games by a very wide margin — even though that gets you beat every time.

You’ve already seen the numbers. The Knicks were 1-for-5 with three turnovers in the last two minutes of Game 1; then their B-team went into a 1-for-4, two-turnover slide in the last two minutes of Game 2.

Now you’re wondering what they can do to prevent their offense from blowing up like Big Baby Davis on a cannoli binge.

The answer is nothing, until they make up their minds that they’re not satisfied with being a 46-minute team in a 48-minute league.

In other words, there’s no magic to this: They have to be smart and alert and imaginative to third and fourth options after the Celtics strangle the first two, as they always do.

And that’s the thing that really aggravates you.

When Celtics coach Doc Rivers draws up a need play in the last two minutes, he knows exactly what he’s going to get. He going to get a dunk off a side out-of-bounds play for Kevin Garnett, or he gets an open 3 for Ray Allen off their 32 series to win a game, or he’s going to get a point-blank postup for KG.

When the Knicks have a need play, it’s almost always an isolation, followed by something that looks as though it was extracted from the Rube Goldberg playbook.

“And I’m sure everyone was asking the same question about the end of Game 2,” one Western Conference assistant coach said Wednesday. “Coming out of a timeout with 19 seconds, knowing they are going to double Melo, why do you even have Jared Jeffries on the floor?”

The point being: Jeffries, a better role player than most of us are willing to admit, has three noticeable flaws in this scenario.

1. He can’t shoot, and the situation called for placing as many shooters on the floor as possible.

2. He can’t finish, not even with a ladder and a road map.

3. And he’s the worst free-throw shooter in the NBA, so they’re going to crack his butt at the rim even if he gets a finger on an offensive rebound opportunity.

So of course the Celtics were going to let him catch the ball.

Yes, even 3 feet from the rim, which is where Melo delivered the pass.

And that’s where Jeffries — on cue, as groans went up all over Gotham — turned the wrong way, ran into a KG roadblock, panicked, and threw the ball away.

It was a shame, too: He had actually played a terrific game.

For Jeffries, that is.

It’s just that if you had to pick the one guy in the entire NBA whose hands should not be anywhere near the ball with five seconds left in a one-point game, it would probably be Jared Jeffries.

(Quasi-related topic: You know who could be pretty useful right around now? Danilo Gallinari. You know who the Knicks can do without right now? Landry Fields. You know where this is going.)

Before this began, we expected this would be a five-game series, or a hard six. The Knicks played their hearts out twice, they’re defending for the first time all season, and that’s a great start.

But they’re re-learning the hard lesson that the real game starts at the two-minute warning. Endeavor to fix that Friday night — hopefully with someone other than Jeffries on the floor — or this will be a very short series, a coach’s nightmare, and a second-guesser’s dream.